Finally! Something showed up!

From my nerve pain that is.. the time is not right for the big answer yet, I guess. I think I still have some more humbling to do - oh man, too much humbling to do.

I got an email from the neurologists a few weeks ago.  Since when do your MRI results get emailed to you at 2am, by the way?  Just the report, no explanation, no 'call me to discuss.' I was so in shock not to see, 'scan unremarkable' like I have for the last, oh, 10 previous MRIs.  There was a paragraph, there was sentence after sentence there!  I've been waiting for these sentences for so long! As strange as it sounds, the sooner I learn what the problem is, and trust me, after nearly 7 years, I'm quite ready to know what the problem is, then I can either fix it or officially accept that it can't be fixed and move on.

Anyway, the results were a little, um, prentiously verbosed.  A big peeve of mine is when people use huge words when perfectly simple words would do just fine.  Seriously, radiologists - we get it - you are smart, but why can't you just say it like it is.  So I did what any normal person would do, I googled them: trigeminal neuralgia.  AKA, pain is so severe it is often called the suicide disease.  Treatment: more surgery. brain surgery: cutting through the skull to access the trigeminal nerve with lots of risks of facial paralysis, etc.  We are not going down that road; this thing had better fix itself.



I guess ('often seen with people with autoimmune disorders'...oh, I loathe that mysterious phrase) my trigeminal nerve is sticking to blood vessels on each side of my face and each time the blood pumps through those vessels my face becomes on FIRE.  I had never ever had a problem with this kind of pain until the day after my jaw surgery I woke up and thought someone was holding a curling iron to my temple.  Now, any person with common sense would think that something went wrong with the surgery. I don't know, maybe it is the fact that my eyes won't close, half of my face is frozen, my lips don't meet up right, people keep asking me if I've had a stroke, etc.  Gettting a doctor to admit that something went wrong to me is a whole different story. Surgery has risks, I get it, just be honest with me!

The jaw doctor says nerve pain is permanent and has absolutely nothing to do with surgery, over and over and over we have had this discussion. The neurologist says, well, haven't been able to get him to call me back since the MRI results came in.  The neurosurgeon that I have been referred to, well, can't get into him for six weeks.  Thus how modern medicine works, lot of waiting, lots of being passed around. 

So, here i sit, 4am with an ice pack to my face, wondering what it is I am to learn from this.  I could get really mad and really bitter and wonder why on Earth I am adding yet another notch in the headboard of stange diseases but instead, I have other plans.  I have this hunch that this development will lead to further answers and so, I will try and sit tight and wait for those to come.  Thus the absence from my writing, I'm really just out of things to say about overcoming pain and fighting the good fight and all of that.  This hurts, I'm in pain, I want it gone. that's about it.